Habakkuk - An Extra Scoop of Pain Please

(So glad you are here! If you want to take full advantage of this study, I would suggest either printing out the lessons or having a journal nearby to answer the questions. I would also have a Bible or Bible App open. Go about this at your own pace. I will be posting lessons twice a week - Wednesday/Friday - with homework you can do in between. And please offer any feedback. I'm a first-timer at this!)

Do you ever sneakily give God advice? (As if we can ever be sneaky around God.)

I do this when my life feels out of control.

I tell God how I think He should answer my prayers.

I gave God one of those “sneaky” nudges of advice not too long ago. I mentioned before that our family had just walked through a year of losing my father-in-law to cancer. If you’ve walked through loss of a loved one, you understand the initial, unbearable sting of those “firsts” without him or her. First Christmas, first birthday, first meal...

In the middle of that sting, my first instinct was to turn to something for instant relief, just like I would with a burn or a cut on my finger. 

My heart needed a cold compress, Neosporin … something to make it stop.

My husband and I had been tossing around the conversation of having a baby.

We had been married 5 years, I wasn’t getting any younger, and isn’t that what married people do? (It was as unspiritual of a conversation as that.)

But when Wes (my father-in-law) died, my desires for a child increased.  

Looking back, I think I thought having a child would be that “instant relief,” that Neosporin. 

It would bring joy back into our family.

So I started nudging God. “God, a child would really be nice right now. It would bring so much happiness to our family. And you know how hard it’s been …”

At the time, I didn’t see that my prayer for a child was a subconscious expectation I had of God. It was also a desire in me to control our uncontrollable sadness.

God answered my prayer immediately. 

We got pregnant, and I just knew this was going to be the way God healed our family.

But six weeks later I began to bleed. And within two days, the baby was gone.

“That’s okay. We will try again. Shake it off!” I told myself not knowing how to handle the grief of miscarriage.

And so we got pregnant again. Fast. Real fast.

“Okay, this is it. Not only will this baby heal our family, but it will heal me from the last miscarriage.”

But seven weeks later, I began to bleed. Two days later, the baby was gone.

“God! You are answering my grief with more grief!! What are you doing? What happened to this plan WE had of healing?”

My trust in Him cracked, crumbled; some days it was all gone.

Has God ever answered your hardship with an extra scoop of hardship?

That’s where we meet Habakkuk in our reading today. 

Remember in last week’s lesson Habakkuk is questioning how a God, supposedly just and good, could watch the wickedness of Judah and not DO anything. 

In today’s reading God tells Habakkuk about what He will DO. But He unveils a plan that isn’t the one Habakkuk would have “sneakily” advised God to make.

READ

Read Habakkuk 1:5-11.

RESPOND

The first words out of the Lord’s mouth in v.5 are, “Look among the nations and see.”

The Israelites were God’s treasured people set apart from “the nations.”

The “nations” referred to the gentile world, the world outside of Israel.

So God first tells not just Habakkuk, but all the people of Judah, to look beyond what is in front of them.

What would this command do to Habakkuk’s perspective?

God tells His people to wake up, look outside of their small little world, because His plan was bigger than Judah. He was about to use these gentile nations in a historical way.

Look at v.5, and write down how God says the people of Judah (including our friend Habakkuk) will react to what he is about to say.

We see these exact words pop up again in Acts 13:41. 

There, Paul is warning pompous religious rulers, who did not accept Christ as Messiah, that they would be judged harshly by God.

Here it is no different. Judah in its ignorance, in its pompous denial of God’s law, was about to be judged in a way they would never believe.

In the unfolding of v.6, how does God say He is going to judge the wickedness of Judah?

God is going to use the gentile and ruthless nation of Babylon to judge the nation of Judah.

Write down what you learn about the Babylonians in v.7-10. How does God describe these heinous people in v.7-10?

As we read earlier in our “his story” post, the nation of Babylon was rising to power under king Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar. You may have heard that second king’s name while learning about the prophet Daniel. 

They were on the brink of destroying Jerusalem.

(Check out 2 Kings 24, 25 for more on the account of Jerusalem falling to Babylon, as well as, Jeremiah 51:53.)

Compare God’s answer in v.7 to Habakkuk’s cry in v.3-4.

Now compare God’s answer in v. 9 to Habakkuk’s complaint in v.2-3.

Are you seeing the irony in all of this?

God is answering Habakkuk’s complaint of violence with MORE violence. He’s answering Judah’s need for justice with MORE injustice.

God’s answer is basically: You think it’s bad now? Just wait.

God even admits in the last verse of our reading today, v.11, that the Babylonians are guilty men. Yet, the guilty men of Babylon are going to judge the guilty men of Judah.

REFLECT

After reading this section, what are your first internal questions for God, maybe even accusation? Write them down. (And be honest.)

If you’ve ever felt like God was answering pain with pain, then you can relate to Habakkuk. I read these verses and question God’s character, wondering if He’s trustworthy, if He’s good.

Okay, so Judah needs a spanking. But Babylon? Really?

Can God use godless people in His plan? Can He use godless people to bring about goodness? Write down your thoughts.

Check out Isaiah 44:28 real quickly.

Here Isaiah prophecies the reign of King Cyrus (150 before he exists), saying that through this pagan king, God would deliver Israel from captivity. God even calls this pagan king His what? His “shepherd.” He would use this man to lead His people out of slavery.

Can God use the godless for His good? He does it all the time.

So in Habakkuk, can He use an unjust people like Babylon to bring justice to Judah? Absolutely. Can He use the violence of Babylon for a greater purpose? Yes.

Can God use our pain to bring about something good? Absolutely.

When God allowed the miscarriages of my babies to happen, I yelled at Him, wept on the ground, literally pointed at Him. I was doubting. I was angry. I was confused.

But something happened in that time where it seemed only pain was answering pain.

An intimacy with the Lord began to form.

I NEEDED Him like never before. Nothing else was working. And though I didn’t trust Him on the surface, something in my soul knew He was my only safe place.

Has that ever happened in your life? Have the moments of pain and doubt ever brought you to a new level of trust in God? If so, write about it. If not, write about what your pain does to your relationship with God. If it puts a wedge in between you two, do you think God could be asking you to press into Him in a new way?

It’s alright to question, even doubt God. 

We are small humans with a small capacity to understand. But don’t stop there.

Instead, take advantage of your doubt; take advantage of those moments of confusion.

How?

By using those moments as a chance to press into His sovereignty.

By using those moments as a chance to look back on God’s faithfulness during previous seasons of suffering in your life.

God uses the godless for His good, and He can use our doubt, our pain, our confusion for good too.

PRAYER

Take a minute to talk to God about any pain, stress, burden going on in your life.

Then, read Romans 8:28. 

Ask God to help you trust in this promise, trust in His plan to use your pain. 

Finally, if there is any bitterness in you toward the Lord for pain in your life, ask Him to meet you in that place. He wants to show you how good He is, even in our suffering.

(References for today's lesson come from The Expositors Bible Commentary, www.biblehub.com, John MacArthur's sermon on Habakkuk at www.gty.org.)